Interview: Hamid Rahmanian of SONG OF THE NORTH at Pasadena Playhouse
Puppetry and animation combined to retell an epic tale
Creator, designer, and director of Song of the North, Hamid Rahmanian is not the sort of person who has ever been able to pinpoint five favorite films, and those who can fascinate him. He has always loved cinema— a wide range of different art films mostly coming from Iran, Japan, and different parts of Europe. In fact, this love of cinema is what originally inspired the established graphic designer to transition to the animation industry. After working on multiple Disney films, he realized he wanted to undertake a project that was “more culturally-motivated”.
“The visual culture of Iran is really not explored at all in the western world,” Rahmanian reflected during our conversation. “Iran is a symphony and in the west, you only heard one drum beat from that composition. I felt that all you see about Iran is political.” Rahmanian reasons, “When you go to a friend’s house, you bring a gift. Some flowers or some fruits.” So as an immigrant to the United States, he wanted to share a new shade of color from his multifaceted, artistically-rich culture. Rather than turn to the worlds of collectors and museums to try and share Persian culture with the people of his new home, Rahmanian looked to the success of epics like Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. “I wanted to be on people’s bookshelves and coffee tables, not hidden away in some collection.” For the past seventeen years, he has generated books, audiobooks, comic books, pop-up books, and theatre dedicated to the longest poem ever written by a single author, the tenth-century epic Shahnameh by Ferdowsi.
Song of the North, his latest theatrical undertaking which will be performed at Pasadena Playhouse, features 483 handmade puppets silhouetted against animated backgrounds. Of his eclectic influences, Rahmanian sites Lotte Reiniger (the leftist, German filmmaker and innovator whose The Adventures of Prince Achmed predates Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by over a decade as the first full-length animated film) as well as Larry Reed, an American puppeteer who specialized in Balinese shadow puppetry.
Rahmanian feels his backgrounds in graphic design, illustration, and cinema have all informed his theatrical work. “As an immigrant, you have to scream so loud to be heard, and in film festivals your work is always packaged as a ‘foreign film’ or an ‘Iranian film. There’s no way for you to play centerfield. If I can’t compete, I’m going to do something different— something no one else can compete with.” Certainly, this fusion of filmed elements, puppetry, and live theatre breaks the boundaries that could otherwise restrict Rahmanian’s work. “I want this work to be in conversation with Persian people of today. It belongs to history but it also belongs to the people in the middle of a war and an uprising who are crying out these verses. I want this to be a lighthouse; a beacon people refer to that protects our culture. It is a connection— a rope through the fog of the traumatic uprisings of the past."
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